Sam. That was me. I was Sam. I am Sam. Ssssssam...

My sister. She was...

No...

No! It can't be gone! She had a cute smile with a slightly upturned nose. Her smirk was as annoying as her need to be right. She was able to make it big streaming. Her eyes were dark green, fading to a lighter green right around her slitted pupils...

Yes... No...

Mother was a large matronly woman. She was supportive. She was kind. She always cooked the best food. She was a little oblivious, but that was fine. Her eyes were just like my sisters. Everyone always said that they were almost carbon copies of the other, just age being the difference.

Father, Pops. He was a hearty fellow. He had bug furry arms and a scary face, but he was a good dad. He wasn't as oblivious as Mother. He also had a huge soft spot for me. We were close confidants. I'd go to him for advice, mainly just to hear his voice sometimes. When I was floundering for a job after college he was there to push me in the direction I was scared to go. My degree I graduated with was... I had a degree.

And... We were all close. Not physically, since my sister and I moved out. We moved to the large city near the ocean, leaving Mother and Pops in our hometown. We had an apartment that we shared. I remember that. We each had our rooms. The living room was dominated by our big couch. Sister had her setup in her room for her single streams, but whenever she enlisted me or her friends we would be on the couch.

Our kitchen was well used. We both knew how to cook from Mother, and cooking duty was both of ours.

One food sister loved was rabbit. I remember us eating rabbit together. It was her and me and Instinct.

...

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I might be going insane.

...

I am hungry though, and Instinct seems done with healing us up. This funk I'm in isn't easily dispelled though, so I try the other magics we have. Fire magic seems to make a heat well up inside my throat. It immediately becomes uncomfortably warm. I open my mouth since I feel the need to burp, and a small gout of flame rushes forth. It singes the rock in front of us. It also leaves my throat raw.

I get to healing my mistake. It doesn't take as long as healing my entire spine and body. I do feel drained in a way that I haven't before when I finish, so I guess I'm out of magic for now. I try to feel out the rest, but there isn't anything to give.

With nothing else to do other than wait or spiral ever deeper into blemished memories, I decide to explore. Instinct isn't saying no, so I squeeze my head out of the crack to get the lay of the land.

It appears that we fell on the edge of a massive cavern. The roof is pitch dark. I can't make it out. The far wall has a few glowing specks on it, but that's all I can make out. The other walls form a roughly circular shape. The sound of water is coming from the far end. The ground around me has some loose dirt over it with a smear through it that leads right to me. It must be the path I took when I fell. A look behind me reveals that I am not at the wall like I thought, but a small ledge that leads to the last wall. The only reason I can make out the walls is from the patches of glowing moss and mushrooms on them. A question to Instinct doesn't reveal anything about them. I don't think I belong here. The creatures I see seem to agree.

There are a bunch of different critters around. All of them are larger than baby hydra me. There seems to be a group of vicious bats tearing into the body of what could only be a moose, but bigger. There are also some massive beetles bumbling about. They leave an almost sandblasted look to the stone they pass. To the side farthest from the bats is a colony of ants. Ants the size of the badger. Behind me, and scariest of all is what looks like a big web. I can only see it since it is covered in dust from my fall. There's also the badger. It is still, and seems to be in the process of being wrapped by a slimy looking spider.

The spider has a black carapace that looks like oil. Instinct screams in my mind to freeze the moment my eyes lay on it. So here I am, head twisted out of my little nook, staring at my family's killer being dragged off into the darkness of a tunnel. A second spider has come to help lug the beast that is five times the size of either of them away. When they leave my sight, I duck into my hidey hole, shivering in fear.

Instinct says we will need a new hole soon. I agree.